TOXIC

MyGen Profile Generator......The treasures you are about to dance to, as you push back the living room furniture in a feverish burst of activity, were selected with passion by Uncle O and DJ Solo to celebrate the third anniversary of the Toxic Nights gigs they have been hosting since 2002. It feels like yesterday; it was an entirely different era. The 90s were not quite over. In the clubs, techno still reigned supreme. And yet the edge was already wearing off its modernity. Split into a myriad of cliques - deep house, jungle, minimal... - as many as there were microphones to play into, almost the cliques had long since ceased to be on speaking terms, and the electronic nights had become hideously predictable. There was an urgent need to get back the fever and the urgency and to rediscover the pleasure of mixing genres and people to draw back into the clubs an audience that fallen out of the habit of going out at night. The Toxic Nights were born of this situation. Bottle-fed on hip hop culture, but with an interest in any other singular universe, Uncle O and DJ Solo have filled their flight bags with a unique mixture of funk (white and black), electro, rap and even new wave rock, ready to mount an onslaught on those sleepy Parisian nights. True to this spirit of openness, Toxic, the album, today contains elements of every style, era and country. The outline of an Internationale of rhythm is taking shape, taking in everything from the Spanish new wave of the late 70s (Esplandor Geometrico) to iconoclastic hip hop (Mike Ladd) to the eccentric electro (Dabrye) of today, not to mention a good number of mutant rarities (ESG II, Royal Family and the Poor, Maurice Starr...). A desire to mark a break and discover things new which has prevailed from the early days of the Toxic Nights. Already in November 2002, the flyer for the first gig, at the Boule Noire in Boulevard Rochechouart, contrasted sharply with the immaculate aesthetics of the time. It was more of a pamphlet than a flyer, in actual fact. Its rushed, hand-scribbled style, its strange cut-up images of men and robots and its fluo spray-paint colours like graffiti on city walls, are a revival of the urban underground. A whiff of punk concerts and underground block parties floats out into the night. In graffiti artists' overalls, protected behind a wire fence like something from the famous scene in the Blues Brothers, Solo and Uncle O fight the good fight on the mixer. A dancer in a leatherette bikini and a fur boa snakes around a striptease pole planted right next to the turntables. On the dance floor the pressure rises. Anyone would think this was an illegal after-hours session straight out of an Abel Ferrara film. New York 2 in the morning? No, Paris Toxic Nights! ..................................